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DEVELOPMENT: South-South Cooperation Soars

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 20 2004 (IPS) - Cooperation between nations of the South will eventually trigger growth and development in some of the world’s poorest countries, according to the United Nations, which marked the first U.N. Day for South-South Cooperation’ on Monday.

The world body has launched an aggressive campaign to strengthen economic and trade relations among the world’s 132 developing nations.

”Trade within the South continues to increase rapidly, with more than 40 percent of developing-country exports now going to other developing countries,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told delegates.

Southern countries also make up the overwhelming majority of the world’s population of six billion people and form the majority of the 191 member states of the United Nations, he added. ”And it is there that some of the leading challenges of our time – such as poverty, environmental degradation and the spread of infectious disease – are most acute,” said Annan.

Trade between southern giants India and China, for example, has grown rapidly in the last decade, from 264.8 million U.S. dollars in 1991 to 10 billion dollars in 2004, according to the latest U.N. figures.

A group of Latin American countries has agreed to work together to set up a regional satellite communication system – another prime example of South-South cooperation, pointed out Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP).

”Thousands of agricultural experts from Asia now work in African countries to help increase food production and improve food security,” he added.

”These examples of cooperation among developing countries would have seemed unlikely when the United Nations began its first technical assistance programme in 1949, but they are so common now that most of those involved are quite unaware that they are implementing policies recommended by a U.N. conference in Argentina in 1978,” according to Malloch Brown.

The UNDP’s Special Unit for Technical Cooperation Among Developing Countries has been transformed into a Special Unit for South-South Cooperation, reflecting a new reality in international economic relations, he said.

Another example is the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) – consisting of Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brunei, Laos, Cambodia, Burma (Myanmar) and Vietnam – now a major source of investment in India.

Part of a region that boasts the world’s most dynamic economic growth, ASEAN has pledged to create a new economic community by 2020. In November, the body and China signed an agreement to begin negotiating a free trade area.

Also, the International Partnership against AIDS in Africa has been described as ”the world’s largest example of intensified South-South cooperation focused on a single urgent issue.”

The IPAA, created in December 2000, is a coalition of African governments and eight U.N. agencies, including UNAIDS, UNDP, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Over the next decade, the IPAA has pledged to help reduce the number of new HIV infections in Africa, promote care for those who suffer from the virus, and mobilise society to halt the advance of AIDS.

The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – has abolished all customs duties on trade in agricultural, animal, industrial and natural resources of indigenous origin. The GCC has also pledged to adopt a common currency in 2010.

In Latin America the five-member Mercosur – comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela – has eliminated tariffs on 90 percent of all regional trade and established a common tariff structure covering some 85 percent of all imports from outside the region.

”We are committed to doubling our efforts to overcome whatever factors have limited South-South cooperation,” Ambassador Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser of Qatar, chairman of the Group of 77, told delegates.

The largest single economic grouping at the United Nations, the G-77 is spearheading the U.N. campaign to intensify South-South cooperation.

In June, the Government of Qatar will host the South Summit, a meeting of world leaders from the 132 developing nations, who will discuss strengthening that partnership.

”However, despite significant progress in the South, the pattern of cooperation has not been commensurate with the comprehensive nature of the commitments contained in the various declarations and other documents on South-South cooperation,” Al-Nasser told IPS.

”The existing capabilities and capacities in the South have not been adequately acknowledged and utilised,” he added.

According to the Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB), the 41 economies of Asia and the Pacific have achieved a growth rate of 5.5 per cent and will continue to expand at an annual rate of 6 per cent between now and 2010.

The two major developing countries, China and India, enjoyed an annual growth rate of 8.0 per cent and 6.0 per cent, respectively, in 2004.

According to figures released by the Group of 77, exports from Argentina and Brazil to China have doubled, and the Chinese market has for the first time become the largest market for the Republic of Korea and other neighbouring countries.

In 2003, almost one-half of all imports by the United States and Japan, and more than one-third of all imports by the European Union, came from the South, and the same is true of the northern nations’ exports to markets in the South.

”It confirms that the South-South trade is becoming a dominant factor in the international economic relations. It shows that developing countries not only continue to be major markets for developed countries but that the trade among themselves is growing much faster then the growth in international trade,” Al-Nasser said.

South-South trade is increasing at an annual rate of 10 per cent, more than twice the rate of expansion of world trade in 2003. If developing countries agreed to reduce the average tariffs applied to each other by 50 per cent, this would generate an additional 15.5 billion dollars in trade, he added.